It's finally getting published!!

My father-in-law is an amazing man. He was converted to the church just over 40 years ago, and while he was at BYU, a religion professor had his class index several conference talks. They had to read each talk, and pull out the different topics that were mentioned or related to the talk. James loved this assignment, and decided that he wasn't going to stop there. For almost 30 years or so he was very faithful at indexing each conference talk from each Conference edition on the Ensign. He had filled a big binder of hand written index sheets which listed a topic like Aaronic Priesthood, and then had talks listed that touched upon the Aaronic Priesthood. Each line listed the person who gave the talk (Henry B. Eyring), which monthly ensign (Nov 1995), what page it was on in the Ensign (38), and a little description of what was said (assignment by deacon's president saves boy --story). This was an awesome tool for preparing talks. I'm not sure why he stopped in 1995, but he always wished that someone would get up the gumption to type it all up so he could give a copy to each of his children.

I married Aaron in Feb of 2002, and Aaron had told me about this neat book, and asked if I'd be interested in typing it up. I love to type and I said, "Sure, why not." At the next family dinner, Aaron told his dad that I was interested in typing up his book. He thought Aaron was being cruel by making me do this, but I assured him it would be fun! He doubted the "fun" part, but said I could do it if I wanted to. In July of 2003 I started typing up the book. When James got a glimpse of what it was looking like, he got excited and decided that he was going to catch up from where he had left off in 1995. Each morning he'd wake up around 5:30 and index several of the talks. When I finished up to 1995, he gave me another binder of the talks he had finished. Finally in December 2004, we had the first edition done. Then James had the idea of making it a "Speakers Index to 40 years of General Conference." We finished it in June of 2008, and Aaron's brother-in-law, Kevin Bradford had it published in Baker so all of the kids got a copy.

James tried to get Deseret Book to publish it because it is such a great help for preparing talks, but they weren't interested. He also tried Seagull Books, but again, no interest was taken in it. I think the problem is that they didn't understand how to use it. Then a couple of weeks ago, James gave a copy to his nephew, David Knowles, and asked him to see what he could do with it. (Dave is into marketing). Dave happened to be in a ward, where the bishop's brother is part of the third largest LDS publishing company. He looked at it and gave it to a lady to take home. That lady happened to have a talk the next Sunday, and as she was preparing it, she saw the book there and decided to give it a try. She came back to work just thrilled about the book.

To make the story short, they will publish the book, and ask that James make yearly updated editions. They will have it for sale at Deseret Book and other LDS bookstores! I am so excited for him. Without him we wouldn't have this awesome book! It has over 400 pages (8.5" x 11"), but they are going to make it smaller dimensions to fit into a scripture bag, and has over 200 topics.

I'm not sure if it will look like this, or if they will have a different cover. Kevin picked this picture of the temple which I really like, but it will be exciting to see it on the shelf with James E. Kerns written on it!!